GreatNews.Life Student Voices: Penn Kingsmen celebrate the end of an era

What’s recently happened? 

As the end of their high school career approaches, Penn High School’s Senior Class of 2025 is celebrating their successes over the past four years.

Earlier this month, the annual Senior Recognition Night took place in the Tania Bengtsson Center for Performing Arts. At the event, students were appreciated for their hard work and dedication. Scholarships were announced and students were recognized for all of the clubs and extracurriculars they participated in.

Dozens of students were particularly recognized by Principal Sean Galiher for their academic and leadership skills— the most notable of the awards being the Principal’s Leadership Award, which was given to Stanley Liew and Adam Herath, and the Paul H. Schmucker Award, given to Noah Shafer.

At the end of the night, 2025’s Kingsmen of the Year was announced. Voted on by the students, Andrew Neely was the recipient of this year’s designation.

All U.S. History classes at Penn finish their chronological coursework with the era of the Civil Rights Movement and hippies. To commemorate the end of the school year, the unique tradition of Pennstock takes place.

This year’s Pennstock, meant to appropriately represent the activities of Woodstock 1969, took place on May 29-30. All junior U.S. History students were invited to play the role of a musician, public speaker, or activist at the event.

Pennstock has been a yearly occurrence at Penn since the early 2000s, and it remains to be an event students look forward to the entirety of their high school years.

Mishawaka Mayor Dave Wood pronounced May 21 as “Dr. Jerry Thacker Day” the same day he gave the Penn Superintendent of the same name a Key to the City at a Penn Key Club meeting.

A day after, Thacker presented the key to his peers and fellow community members at his retirement open house. The celebration was hosted in the Penn Harris Madison (PHM) Educational Services Center to thank Thacker for his 19 years of service with the PHM District. School Board President Chris Riley gave remarks on his time with Thacker.

“We started just talking about our families and interests,” Riley said. “Then I asked him, ‘how many children do you have?’ and, without skipping a beat, he looked through glass windows of his office and pointed euphemistically at Penn High School and said, ‘I have 11,000.’”

What’s coming up?

Thacker’s retirement is set to take place on July 1, when now Assistant Superintendent Heather Short is set to take his place. Short has spent the last 31 years with the PHM District. 

Thacker is retiring with the graduating Class of 2025, whose commencement ceremony is scheduled for June 9 at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Center on the University of Notre Dame’s campus. There is no ticket requirement for guests, so anyone can come and celebrate the graduating seniors.

A livestream will be available on the Penn website for anyone not in attendance.

While the HVAC system in the high school building gets an update over the summer, 2025’s PHM summer camps are set to take place at Schmucker Middle School.

The Visual Arts Academy camp will take place over the span of two separate weeks: July 14-18 and July 28-August 1. These two weeks will be filled with creative enrichment and a partnership with Notre Dame’s Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

The Robotics Academy will also take course over the span of two weeks: June 10-13 and June 16-20. These sessions are separated by grade level, and all campers will have experience with the entire process of Robotics Teams 135 and 328 by the end of the week.

The Penn Media Camp, sponsored by the “Penn News Network,” will take place from June 16-19. At this camp, middle school students will work with Penn students to create a news broadcast that covers all of the events happening at Penn that week.

The week after, June 23-28, the Penn Speech & Debate Camp will take place. At this camp, middle school students will work with Penn students to learn proper speaking etiquette and debate skills.

However, before the Penn Speech & Debate summer camp, Coach Jeremy Starkweather and his team will travel to Des Moines, Iowa to compete in the 2025 National Speech & Debate Tournament.  The team leaves on June 14 and will return on June 21. 

Staff spotlight: 

As this second season for the Penn Boys Volleyball team came to an end on May 24, Head Coach Kelley Watts is looking forward to the future. 

While it may have been a rough start to the year, as the Penn team entered the competition a few months later than other teams in the area, Watts and her team finished this season with a 13-11 record, reigning Sectional champions in the 2024-25 IHSAA Boys Volleyball State Tournament. 

“There were bumps in the process and we didn’t get started right away. It was tough, but we’ve come a long way,” Watts said. “I know we will continue to grow and improve in the next few years.”

It was an especially hard adjustment for Watts, as the new-found time commitment from coaching was putting a dent in her schedule as a Spanish teacher at Penn. However, she’s willing to manage it all because of how much she loves what she does.

Watts’ plan wasn’t always to become a teacher — she had deemed the effort needed was too heavy after watching her mother’s struggle for time as a first grade teacher — but all of the people she was around in her adolescence led her down the career path. From her high school volleyball coach to a professor at Indiana University Indianapolis, everyone had always encouraged her to follow her love of the Spanish language and education in general.

“We at Penn have the best students in the area. I love that I get to know each of the kids individually,” Watts said. “Seeing the ‘aha’ moments from a student that has been struggling is always the most rewarding part of teaching.”

On top of the late nights spent grading tests and assignments on the bus ride home from a volleyball match, Watts still manages to allocate time to spend with her loved ones. She’s known to often play tennis with some of her coworkers, as well as going to concerts and watching television with her vizsla named Pippa.

Student spotlight:

There’s a common theme of camaraderie within the “Penn News Network” team, and Freshman Cohen Schiff has certainly felt that over the past nine months. 

When Schiff walked through the doors of Penn for the very first time, he definitely didn’t expect to be in the place where he is today.

“I expected to be one of those introverted students who wasn’t very involved, but things happened and now I’m involved,” he said. “Being so involved this early makes me excited for what I can keep building over the next few years. It’s a lot of work, but I like feeling like I’m contributing and growing already.”

He decided to take the Principles of Broadcasting course to pursue his passion of videography and production after already having years of experience. His interest in technology began in the time of COVID-19, when he was put in charge of producing and editing a newscast for Discovery Middle School. Once he got used to the interface of Apple’s iMovie, he began editing videos for YoungLife, a Presbyterian ministry for the youth. 

Since then, everything’s gone uphill for Schiff. He’s learned about every nook and cranny of the production process, from how to run light rigs to directing live streams with multiple cameras. He’s self-taught, and he attributes a lot of his success to trial and error.

“Trying new things and failing only helps me to persevere until I can get it right,” he said. “Working with people who are better than me has also pushed me to level up.”

Even though it’s still quite a bit away, Schiff plans on attending a college or university with a high-ranked media program. He’s mostly interested in live production, but he’d still like to continue activities like videography and editing on the side. However, he is aware that things may change within the next three years.

“There’s always something new to learn, whether it’s a new piece of gear or a better way to tell a story,” Schiff said. “More than that, I love how videography lets me bring ideas to life, whether it’s through a cinematic camera shot, pristine sound effects, or colorful lights. It brings me joy to do these activities.”

One would think that Schiff has enough videography and photography during the day, but one of Schiff’s greatest joys is his drone. He enjoys aimlessly flying it through his neighborhood and other areas. 

When he’s not geeking out over technology, Schiff can be found hanging around with his friends and family, or simply at the neighborhood Culver’s.